Have an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ system with 1GB of DDR2-667. Want to upgrade and weighing my options. My easiest upgrade path would be straight to a 6400+ and 4GB of Corsair DDR2-800. This would cost about $225 after the mail-in rebate on the memory. I will throw in an 8800GT or 8800GTS regardless of the CPU and memory, so I am not weighing that.
But, I am concerned that the 6400+ is not the best bang for my buck. I could go alternate route, which would involve an Asus P5-NE and either an E2160 overclocked to 3.0GHz or an E8400 overclocked to 4.0GHz, same memory. This would be quite a bit more expensive, but all of the benchmarks that I can find suggest that either one of these systems (particularly the E8400) would be in a completely different class than the 6400+.
The end result that I am looking for is a system that will be "future proof" for at least the next 2-3 years. My feeling is that the E8400 Wolfsdale with 4GB will be all the power that I can use and then some until the next major release of Winblows. The P5-NE supports Core2Duo Quad chips as well, so I could always pop in a Q6600 or one of its successors with a BIOS flash later on. I just don't see the 6400+ keeping up with the curve. Is my thinking wrong?
But, I am concerned that the 6400+ is not the best bang for my buck. I could go alternate route, which would involve an Asus P5-NE and either an E2160 overclocked to 3.0GHz or an E8400 overclocked to 4.0GHz, same memory. This would be quite a bit more expensive, but all of the benchmarks that I can find suggest that either one of these systems (particularly the E8400) would be in a completely different class than the 6400+.
The end result that I am looking for is a system that will be "future proof" for at least the next 2-3 years. My feeling is that the E8400 Wolfsdale with 4GB will be all the power that I can use and then some until the next major release of Winblows. The P5-NE supports Core2Duo Quad chips as well, so I could always pop in a Q6600 or one of its successors with a BIOS flash later on. I just don't see the 6400+ keeping up with the curve. Is my thinking wrong?